The International Networking Forum is designed to bring together colleagues who are working in the international arena on prevention science research, programs, and policies. This is an interactive forum and it is not a workshop nor a didactic session; rather it is an effort to foster international collaboration in pursuit of promoting prevention science world-wide. Participation is key to the forum. The forum is sponsored by the International Task Force and each year, projects are addressed that will further the underlying goal of supporting and networking colleagues who work in the international arena.

The International Program and Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research (DESPR) of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will host the 9th Annual NIDA International SPR Poster Session. The poster session will take place in conjunction with the SPR Tuesday Evening Poster Session and Opening Reception. Posters will highlight drug and alcohol abuse prevention research, including research on drug-related HIV/AIDS prevention. The research presentations will have been conducted in international settings by international researchers, domestic researchers, or bi-national teams.

Pre-Conference Workshop I

Date: Tuesday, May 31, 2016Time: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm

Meta-analytic methods for examining the effects of prevention programs

The purpose of this workshop is to provide attendees with the skills and knowledge needed to conduct a meta-analysis to examine the effects of prevention and intervention programs. The goals of the workshop are to provide attendees with training on the technical issues and statistical analyses distinctive to meta-analysis, providing hands-on experience using meta-analytic statistical techniques with R/Stata. By the end of the workshop, attendees should have the tools and skills needed to (a) be informed consumers of meta-analyses, (b) extract effect sizes from primary studies and create meta-analytic databases, (c) quantitatively synthesize effect sizes across studies, and (d) explore variability in effect sizes across studies.

Description:
The purpose of this workshop is to introduce attendees to those quasi-experimental practices that “very often” produce results that are “close” to those from randomized clinical trials with the same content and population as the quasi-experiments. By close we understand within at least .10 standard deviations of the RCT result that serves as the most valid estimate of the true causal relationship. The specific quasi-experimental designs considered are basic regression-discontinuity, comparative regression-discontinuity, interrupted time-series (including single case designs), comparative interrupted time-series, and various combinations of quasi-experimental design features that include ‘local” non-equivalent comparison groups, use of a single pretest measure of the study outcome, use of a “rich” set of other covariates, and explications of the selection process that is then used to guide the choice of covariates. The differences due to the use of different data analysis procedures will also be addressed, including ordinary least squares and propensity scores. Surprisingly for some, analytic differences play a much smaller role than design differences.

Pre-Conference Workshop III

Motivational Interviewing Training and Assessment System for Educational Applications

Organizer: Jon Lee, PhD, University of Cincinnati

Presenters: John Lee, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Andy Frey, PhD, University of Louisville, Keith Herman, PhD, and Wendy Reinke, PhD, University of Missouri

Description:
Motivational interviewing (MI; Miller & Rollnick, 2012) is a goal-oriented style of communication that has been leveraged by several educational research groups as a guiding framework for developing intervention protocols (Frey et al., 2014; Reinke, Herman, & Sprick, 2011; Strait, et al., 2012), and improving implementation fidelity of well-established interventions (Lee et al., 2014; Reinke et al., 2012). The promise of MI for changing adolescent and adult behavior within the context of school-based intervention is generalizable to Evidenced Based Practices (EBP) in a variety of prevention science contexts, such as mental health services and home visitation programs. Enabling the transfer of MI’s full impact and advantages into these settings is a promising strategy, yet this outcome will likely depend on the extent to which prevention science researchers and service providers implement the approach competently. While the application of MI in community mental health settings has demonstrated promise (Romano, & Peters, 2015; Smith, Stormshak, & Kavanagh, 2015), relatively little is known about the feasibility of establishing MI competency, or how to evaluate it, outside the context of substance abuse therapy (e.g., in educational contexts).

Description:
The purpose of the workshop is to provide prevention researchers and practitioners with a context in which to address health equity most appropriately, namely through a grounding in the social determinants of health. Utilizing California as a case study, the workshop will explore the emergence of the health equity lens as a key component to the important decisions impacting prevention science, including getting the right data, telling a compelling story, and moving instrumental institutions, partners and funders to action. In this highly interactive session, participants will assess their own opportunities and challenges for adopting or integrating a health equity agenda and have access to the team of presenters for individualized consultation during small group work.

Description:
The SPR Advocacy Committee and the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives (NPSC) is co-sponsoring this workshop on effective efforts to educate the public and legislators about the efficacy of prevention. More broadly, this workshop will present ways in which translation of knowledge to these audiences has potential to influence behavior at a population level, which is needed for at least two reasons. First, too few practitioners and policymakers are aware of the wide array of programs, practices, and policies that have proven impact in affecting the most common and costly psychological, behavioral, and health problems. Knowledge about what is achievable is compelling and likely to increase support for the adoption of well-tested, effective interventions and public policies that bolster adoption and implementation. Second, as has been true of the tobacco control movement, mass media has the potential to have a direct preventive impact on reducing the prevalence of psychological and behavioral problems.